The present invention pertains generally to the field of locks and keys. More particularly, the new and useful invention claimed in this document pertains to a system for ornamenting a key. The present invention is particularly, but not exclusively, useful for encasing a key blank within an ornamental casing having any shape or configuration.
The lock, a mechanical device for securing a door or receptacle originated in the Near East. Possibly 4,000 years old, a lock of the type known as a pin tumbler originated in Egypt. A pin tumbler lock of those days consisted of a large wooden bolt to secure a door, through which a slot with several holes was formed in the upper surface. An assembly attached to the door contained several wooden pins positioned to drop into the holes and grip the bolt. In that early embodiment, the key was a large wooden bar, something like a toothbrush in shape; instead of bristles it had upright pegs matching the holes and the pins. Inserted in the large keyhole below the vertical pins the key was lifted to raise the pins clear and allowing the bolt, with the key in it, to be slid back. Four thousand years later, the falling-pin principle remains a basic feature of many locks, including the modern Yale lock.
The Romans introduced metal for locks often bronze for the key. The Romans also invented wards, projections around a keyhole but inside the lock, which prevent a key from being rotated unless slots are cut in the flat face of the key (the xe2x80x9cbitxe2x80x9d) allowing the projections to pass through the slots. For centuries locks depended on wards for security; significant ingenuity was devoted to designing wards and to cutting keys to make locks secure against any but the correct key.
Ornamentation of keys and locks began in the Middle Ages. Great skill and high degrees of workmanship were employed in making metal locks and keys. Exteriors were lavishly decorated. Keys became virtual works of art. The security afforded by the locks and keys, however, remained dependent on warding; that mechanism of the lock developed hardly at all.
In 1778 Robert Barron, in England, patented a double-acting tumbler lock. A tumbler is a lever, or pawl, that falls into a slot in a bolt to prevent movement until it is raised by the key to exactly the correct height above the slot; the key then slides the bolt. The Barron lock had two tumblers. The key had to raise each tumbler by a different amount before the bolts could be shot. This was a significant advance in lock design, and remains the basic principle of all lever locks. In 1784 a remarkable lock also was patented in England by Joseph Bramah. Operating on an entirely different principle, it used a very small light key, yet provided unprecedented security. Bramah""s locks are very intricate and constructed by a series of machines to produce parts mechanically. These were among the first machine tools designed for mass production. With the rapidly expanding economy that followed the Industrial Revolution, the demand for locks and keys grew tremendously. The demand for security in the form of lock and keys, and for ornamentation of both, has persisted unabated. Indeed, adding a wide variety of adornments, designs, and identifying symbols to keys has increased in demand, particularly since Linus Yale invented in 1848 a cylinder lock that could be opened by a small, light, easily transportable flat key with a serrated edge. Pins in the cylinder are raised to the proper height by the serrations, making it possible to turn the cylinder. The number of combinations of heights of the pins coupled with a warding effect provide almost unlimited variations. Yale locks and keys are almost universally used for outside doors of buildings and automobile doors.
Recent innovations have employed magnetic forces used in locks that continue to work on the Yale principle. The key has no serrations; instead, it contains a number of small magnets. When the key is inserted into the lock, the magnets repel magnetized spring-loaded pins, raising them in the same way that serrations on a Yale-type key raise them mechanically. When these pins are raised the correct height, the cylinder of the lock is free to rotate in the barrel.
Because keys are so prevalent a security device, a variety of apparatus have been offered for ornamenting the conventional, bland, unattractive key or key head. Jewelers have offered a variety of interchangeable casings or heads for keys. The shape, configuration, dimensions of keys and key blanks are essentially unlimited.
Therefore, a previously unaddressed need exists in the industry for a new, useful and improved system and method for ornamenting a key that is capable of providing not only ornamentation, but interchangeability of keys with ornamental casings in which keys are held. Particularly, there is a significant need for a method and apparatus that provides a configurable ornamental key system for removably installing a casing capable of adding ornamentation to a key.
Given the conventional solutions for solving the problem of providing an ornamental casing for a key, it would be desirable, and of considerable advantage, to provide a system for ornamenting a variety of keys.
The present invention provides numerous advantages in connection with providing a system for ornamenting a key. At least one advantage of the present invention is that it provides a system capable of interchangeably accepting a variety of keys and key blanks. Another advantage of a configurable key system is the ease with which a number of different keys may be inserted into and removed from the key casing. Yet another advantage of the present invention is a method for removably installing a casing on a key that securely houses a key within the casing, while allowing ease of removal, yet provides a wide variety of ornamental configurations for the system. The present invention also provides an apparatus and method for making the apparatus that respectively are easy to use and to practice, and which are cost effective for their intended purposes. The advantages and other objects of the present invention, and features of such an invention, will become apparent to those skilled in the art when read in conjunction with the accompanying following description, drawing figures, and appended claims.
A system for ornamenting a key includes a casing, a key blank that is removably insertable into the casing, and a number of ways for securing the key blank in the casing. The casing may be shaped or ornamented in a number variety of ways. The casing may be formed to engage a tray in which a portion of the key or key blank may be reposited. For additional rigidity among the structural components of the assembled system for ornamentation of a key, the tray may include a neck engageable with a notch formed in the nonoperative end of the key or key blank. To secure the components of the invention, the tray also may include a threaded tube mounted substantially vertically on the top surface of the tray. The threaded tube protrudes through a hole formed in the key as well as through an opening formed through the casing. One or more threaded rods for removably securing the key blank within the casing may be used such as a nut, bolt, or similar threaded rod for securing the components may be used to hold the system together. Because the securing device is threaded, the key is removable from the casing. Not only may the casing itself be ornamental and ornamented in any way, the securing devices used to secure the components may themselves be ornamented.
In an alternative embodiment, the system for ornamenting a key may provide one or more indentations in the body of the key blank. The casing may be formed with one or more threaded ducts through the collar of the casing. Also, one or more threaded set screws that are retractably insertable may be inserted through the threaded ducts until one end of the threaded set screw is adjacent the one or more indentations, thus securing the casing to the key.
In yet another alternative embodiment of the present invention, the system for ornamenting a key may include one or more tab flanges formed in the collar of the casing. After inserting one end of the key into the casing, the user may apply pressure on the one or more tabs, thus engaging one or more indentations formed in the body of the key blank.
Thus, it is clear from the foregoing that the claimed subject matter as a whole, including the structure of the apparatus, and the cooperation of the elements of the apparatus, as well as the method for the apparatus, combine to result in a number of unexpected advantages and utilities of the present invention as recited above.
The foregoing has outlined broadly the more important features of the invention to better understand the detailed description which follows, and to better understand the contribution of the present invention to the art. Before explaining at least one embodiment of the invention in detail, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited in application to the details of construction, and to the arrangements of the components, provided in the following description or drawing figures. The invention is capable of other embodiments, and of being practiced and carried out in various ways. Also, the phraseology and terminology employed in this disclosure are for purpose of description, and should not be regarded as limiting.
As those skilled in the art will appreciate, the conception on which this disclosure is based readily may be used as a basis for designing other structures, methods, and systems for carrying out the purposes of the present invention. The claims, therefore, include such equivalent constructions to the extent the equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Further, the abstract associated with this disclosure is neither intended to define the invention, which is measured by the claims, nor intended to be limiting as to the scope of the invention in any way.
The novel features of this invention, and the invention itself, both as to structure and operation, are best understood from the accompanying drawing, considered in connection with the accompanying description of the drawing, in which similar reference characters refer to similar parts, and in which: